Panther Problems on Powerbook

R

ramorse

Registered
I guess I like alliteration.

Anyway, I have upgraded my Titanium 667 Mhz Powerbook (512k RAM) to Panther and have had nothing but problems.

First, I kept getting an error on boot up that wouldn't allow me to get to the desktop. This had to do with Palm Desktop. I upgraded to the most recent version, but still have the problem. So I rebooted from the CD, changed to System 9 and trashed the application.

Now I can boot in Panther, but I get another error that says Connection failed: An Appleshare system error occurred.

What does this mean?

Also, several of my applications won't start. Like none of the Macromedia MX 2004 apps will start.

I have run Disk Utility to correct Permission and to Repair Disk several times. I have also booted in Single User mode and run fsck -f from command line several times.

Help!
 
Does "upgraded ... to Panther" mean you did an update and not a fresh install? If so, this would be the first guess why things are so messed. Anyway, add a new account and check if you still have the same issues. If repairing permissions doesn'T show any errors anymore and you still have all those probs, consider a fresh install.

And welcome to the forum :)
 
Zammy-Sam said:
And welcome to the forum :)
Click to expand...
Thanks!

I originally did an upgrade from Jaguar. Subsequent tries I did an full install.
BTW, this last time, when I did the install and then upgraded that from Software Update and rebooted I didn't get the error.

But I am still having problems with starting applications.

Argh! Now I cant remember my root password. I need that to create a new user don't I to login as root?
 
You can boot from the Panther Install CD and reset the root password. Just reboot from the CDs, and when the installer pops up, select "Reset password" from the menubar at the top.

Also, it may help to remove any additional RAM modules or try different combinations of RAM modules to eliminate that as a factor. Panther seems to be a lot pickier about the RAM module -- even the ones that Apple shipped factory-installed.

When you do reinstall from scratch, may I suggest installing OS X, then running Software Update over and over until no more updates show up... then proceed to install your applications, launching each one after the install to make sure it works and then proceeding to the next... maybe you can narrow down something with that procedure.
 
Apple has this article about reseting passwords.

It also sounds like an Archive & Install would be your best bet. Plus, if I were you I would think hard about maybe buying a good Disk repair Utility like DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro.

Diskwarrior has saved my hacking butt many times. It is well worth it's price. TechTool's latest is really good too at repairing OS X.
 
Interesting. I didn't realize you had to keep doing Software Updates. I thought it would check for everything at once. I will try that.

What is a RAM module? I am not aware of having any.

Update: I repeated the Software Updates and I switched to a different user. Still can't get the Macromedia apps to laumch. Most everything else seems to work, though.

I wonder if could re-install Palm Desktop. Or does anyone know of an alternative.
 
It appears I have solved the problem!

I logged in as root and was able to open each Macromedia app.

Then I logged back in as myself and was able to start them all.

This is not to say I won't be getting Disk Warrior or Tech Tool. I have an older version of Tech Tool around somewhere, but haven't kept it up to date.

Any one have an opinion on which is better?

Thanks all for your help!
 
Given a choice of only being able to have one of them, it would definitely be DiskWarrior.
 
i've had crappy problems with panther on my pb1ghz, it sometimes wont load finder, and then sometimes won't never shutdown.

i did a clean install again a while back, seemed to resolve some of the problems.
 
This is not to say I won't be getting Disk Warrior or Tech Tool. I have an older version of Tech Tool around somewhere, but haven't kept it up to date.
Click to expand...

If your choice is between DiskWarrior 3 and TechTool 3 then clearly DiskWarrior 3 is the better option. On the other hand if it is between DW 3 and TechTool Pro 4, I would choose TTP 4. TTP 4 has far more tests and repairs, does more kinds of optimization, will defrag both the files and disk, has protection features that will warn you in advance of impending disk problems, and can non-destructively create, or remove, a 4 GB invisible bootable partition called the eDrive on your hard drive to run TTP 4 from. The eDrive gets around the problem of bootable CDs and allows TTP 4 the luxury of using Virtual Memory for improved performance.
 
Ouch... if opening the file with root solved the problem... wouldn't that be a permissions problem?

And just some explanation:
The software update won't automatically show you all the installs you need for one very important reason. Updates are dependent on what's currently installed on the system. So if you have Version "X" of Quicktime, the software update only looks for update "Y" because update "Z" may be dependent on some of the alterations that were made in update Y".
 
Many of my colleagues had problems with Panther initially when upgrading from Jaguar. They had a root user enabled, which isn't necessary at all. For anything, really. And Apple advises (rightly so) _not_ to enable the root-account. Those colleagues now have freshly installed systems with no root-account enabled.
 
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